So you have decided to grow a beard, and now the skin underneath your facial hair has gotten dry.
Trust me, it happens to the best of us, and it’s definitely a burden to deal with, as dry beard skin will inevitably lead to beard dandruff and beard itch if you don’t deal with it early.
There are few reasons why you get dry skin under the beard in the first place and a handful of things that you can do to prevent the dryness entirely and have your beard feeling soft and nourished.
Which is exactly what we will be looking at below. ↓
What Causes Dry Beard Skin?
Why did your beard skin get so dry in the first place? Well, there are a couple of reasons, and it’s likely a combination of them…
You see, the skin underneath your beard, as well as the actual facial hair fibers, are moisturized by something called sebum oil.
And this sebum oil is produced by the tiny sebaceous glands in your skin and facial hair follicles.
There is only a finite amount of natural oil that the glands can produce daily, and if you do anything that strips away the sebum oil or increases its consumption, then the skin under your beard will get dry as a result.
But what exactly strips away the natural oils and causes dry skin under beard?
- Washing the beard with shampoo that has a high amount of strong detergents like lye, sodium hydroxide, or potassium hydroxide.
- Washing your face with face washes and anti-acne cleansers that strip away all the natural sebum oils and dry out the beard.
- Washing the facial hair too often. Most grooming experts recommend that you wash your beard just a couple times per week.
- You are growing out a long beard, which needs more natural oils, but the sebaceous glands can’t keep up.
Bottom line: The primary reason that men get dry skin underneath their beards is that they wash their beards and the skin under it with too often and with shampoos and face washes that contain harsh detergents.
How to Cure a Dry Skin Under the Beard
Believe it or not, fixing a dry skin underneath your beard is quick, easy, and very cheap (even completely free in some cases).
It involves the basic steps of eliminating the factors that strip away the nourishing natural oils that your skin is constantly producing, removing the dead skin cells that have already perished, and giving your beard some extra moisture as a band-aid.
Below are the four most important steps you need to master in order to never have to deal with a dry flaky beard skin again.
Change the Way You Wash the Beard
As you learned above, the biggest reason your beard skin gets dry, itchy, and filled with dandruff, is simply because you expose it to harsh detergents too often.
In other words, you are washing your beard way too frequently, you are washing it with generic shampoo instead of gentle beard wash, and you’re not using beard conditioner to mitigate the sebum-stripping effects.
Properly cleaning your beard is as simple as this:
- Wash your beard no more than 2-3x per week.
- If you must wash it more often, then try beard co-washing.
- Get good beard shampoo.
- Get a good beard conditioner.
- Never ever use generic scalp-hair shampoos on the beard.
Bottom line: Preventing skin dryness under the beard is best done by learning the proper beard washing methods, which in all of its simplicity means that you do not wash the beard too often and always use gentle beard shampoos over sebum-stripping generic washes.
Get a Good Beard Moisturizer
To quickly remedy and revitalize your dried up beard skin with a band-aid solution, you need to get a good beard moisturizer.
Sure, beard oil works well or even beard balm, but if its the skin underneath your beard that is especially dry, then water-based beard lotion is actually better than any oil or balm ever could be.
This is because the water/glycerine based moisturizers can absorb rapidly and easily penetrate the deep skin layers, much more effectively than beard oil or balm could.
Exfoliate the Dead Skin Cells
If the skin under your facial hair has already gotten dry, then most likely you also harbor a lot of dead skin cells there too.
Showering and moisturizing can dissolve and remove some of these, but they can be quite persistent.
In my experience, the best way to get rid of them is actually through exfoliating the beard, either with a dedicated beard scrub (which could be used 1-2 times per month) or with a stiff beard brush (which you can use daily).
Start Drinking Enough Water
Last but not least, you can remedy a dry beard skin simply by drinking more water.
This cost-effective method will ensure that your beard gets well hydrated from the inside and will make all of the tips above easier and more effective as well.
Bottom line: Drinking enough of fluids (at least 8 glasses per day) is a great way of moisturizing the beard skin from the inside.
Conclusion
Nobody likes a dry beard that flakes off as embarrassing-looking dandruff and dead skin cells.
Worse yet, if you don’t fix your dry beard in time, it will get brittle and you’ll run into issues like beard hair loss and beard split-ends as well.
Luckily it’s not hard at all to fix a dry skin under your whiskers. Just re-learn your beard washing habits, get a good beard moisturizer (or beard oil), drink enough water, and remove the already died skin cells with proper exfoliation methods.
That’s all I have for you today. Thanks for reading and keep on beardin’.
